Fun

  • A pun to familiarize students with Anscombe's Quartet - the group of 4 data sets with the same means, standard deviations, correlations, and regression lines for X and Y that were produced by British statistician Frank Anscombe in a 1973 paper in the American Statistician. The joke was written in 2016 by Larry Lesser from The University of Texas at El Paso. This joke should be used in a written form since students will not "get" the joke if they have never heard of Anscombe's Quartet - the value for teaching coming from having them look it up. Alternatively, it can be used in an oral presentation following an activity on this topic.

    0
    No votes yet
  • A joke for discussing how transformations can make data more normal and stabilize variances across groups with different means (here the square root transformation for Poisson data). The joke was written in 2016 by Larry Lesser from The University of Texas at El Paso.

    0
    No votes yet
  • A "haiku" poem written by Larry Lesser from The University of Texas at El Paso. The poem is a playful vehicle to help introduce the chi-square test for contingency tables.
    5
    Average: 5 (1 vote)
  • A pun to be used in discussing the concept of regression to the mean. The joke was co-authored in 2017 by Larry Lesser (The University of Texas at El Paso) and Dennis Pearl (Penn State University).

    5
    Average: 5 (1 vote)
  • A joke to use discussing the broad types of research that might go under the name "Survey". The joke was written by Larry Lesser (The University of Texas at El Paso) and Dennis Pearl (Penn State University).
    0
    No votes yet
  • A joke written by Larry Lesser from The University of Texas at El Paso to highlight the difference between concepts of central tendency and variation.
    5
    Average: 5 (1 vote)
  • A cartoon to be used for discussing the meaning of probability statements in the media such as when you hear there's a 25% chance of rain in the forecast. The cartoon was used in the July 2016 CAUSE Cartoon Caption Contest. The winning caption was submitted by Michael Huberty from University of Minnesota., a student at Belgrade High School. The drawing was created by John Landers using an idea from Dennis Pearl. Other honorable mentions for captions that rose to the top of the judging that month included "A data set with seasonality" written by Larry Lesser from University of Texas at El Paso; "ANOVA – Analysis of Varied Atmospheres," written by Deb Sedik from Bucks County Community College: and "Variability matters!" written by Debmalya Nandy, a student at Penn State University. (to use this cartoon with an alternate caption simply download and replace the caption using a bolded comic sans font)
    0
    No votes yet
  • A cartoon to be used for discussing the value of data visualizations. The cartoon was used in the August 2016 CAUSE Cartoon Caption Contest. The winning caption was submitted by Barb Osyk from the University of Akron, while the drawing was created by John Landers using an idea from Dennis Pearl. Other honorable mentions that rose to the top of the judging included "I told you exploded pie charts are dangerous!" written by Aaron Profitt from God’s Bible School and College; "Liar liar, data on fire," written by Mickey Dunlap from University of Tennessee at Martin: and "I warned you about using hot deck imputation when you have so much missing data!" written by Elizabeth Stasny, from The Ohio State University. (to use this cartoon with an alternate caption simply download and replace the caption using a bolded comic sans font)
    0
    No votes yet
  • A cartoon to be used for discussing the normality assumption in statistical models. The cartoon was used in the September 2016 CAUSE Cartoon Caption Contest. The winning caption was submitted by Eugenie Jackson, a student at University of Wyoming while the drawing was created by John Landers using an idea from Dennis Pearl. A second winning caption was by Amy Nowacki from Cleveland Clinic/Case Western Reserve University whose entry “The dangers of driving more than 3 standard deviations below the speed limit,” would be useful in a classroom discussion of z-scores (see "Cartoon: Pile-UP II") Honorable mentions that rose to the top of the judging in the September caption contest included “Big pile-up at percentile marker -1.96 on the bell-curve. You might want to take the chi-square curve to avoid these negative values,” written by Mickey Dunlap from University of Tennessee at Martin; “Call the nonparametric team! This is not normal!” written by Semra Kilic-Bahi of Colby-Sawyer College; “I assumed the driving conditions today would be normal!” written by John Vogt of Newman University; and “CAUTION: Z- values seem smaller than they appear. Slow down & watch for stopped traffic reading these values,” written by Kevin Schirra, a student at University of Akron.
    0
    No votes yet
  • A cartoon to be used for discussing z-scores. The cartoon was used in the September 2016 CAUSE Cartoon Caption Contest. The winning caption was submitted by Amy Nowacki from Cleveland Clinic/Case Western Reserve University, while the drawing was created by John Landers using an idea from Dennis Pearl. A second winning caption "Even a crash course in model-fitting will need to consider distributions other than normal," was by Eugenie Jackson, a student at University of Wyoming, is well-suited for starting a conversation about the normality assumption in statistical models.(see "Cartoon: Pile-UP I") Honorable mentions that rose to the top of the judging in the September caption contest included "Big pile-up at percentile marker -1.96 on the bell-curve. You might want to take the chi-square curve to avoid these negative values," written by Mickey Dunlap from University of Tennessee at Martin; "Call the nonparametric team! This is not normal!” written by Semra Kilic-Bahi of Colby-Sawyer College; "I assumed the driving conditions today would be normal!" written by John Vogt of Newman University; and "CAUTION: Z- values seem smaller than they appear. Slow down & watch for stopped traffic reading these values,” written by Kevin Schirra, a student at University of Akron.
    0
    No votes yet

Pages